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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics

A hilariously conspiratorial justification by Clifford Shoemaker for harassing a blogger

I’ve written a lot about the legal thuggery perpetrated against autism blogger Kathleen Seidel by an unethical lawyer named Clifford Shoemaker, who issued a subpoena against her based on dubious conspiratorial thinking about her supposedly being a shill for big pharma. Shoemaker, in case you didn’t know, is a lawyer who represents litigants suing vaccine […]

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Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

“Integrative” medicine at Yale: A more “fluid” concept of evidence?

I realize that I’ve been very, very remiss in attending to a task that I’ve been meaning to get to since late January. There are several reasons, albeit not excuses, for why I have failed to do this task. Perhaps the most powerful impediment to my overcoming my inertia and just diving in and doing […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Bioethics Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Some monkey business in autism research (or, why it is not a good idea to provoke Orac)

Believe it or not, even I, Orac, sometimes get tired of blogging about antivaccination idiocy. Indeed, this week was just such a time. I hope you can’t blame me. After all, the last few months have been so chock-full of some of the most bizarre and annoying antics of antivaccinationists at such a frequent clip […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Friday Woo Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Your Friday Dose of Woo: MORA the same ol’ same ol’ woo

This week was difficult. No, it wasn’t difficult because I had hit one of my periodic woo writer’s blocks that I whine about, no doubt to the occasional annoyance of my readers, even though I have one of the greatest hobbies in the world. I mean, I get to do something that I love (writing […]

Categories
Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Surgery

On the enormous variability of cancer behavior

Perhaps one of the most common misconceptions held about cancer among lay people is that it is one disease. We often hear non-physicians talk about “curing cancer” as though it were a single disease. Sometimes, we even hear physicians, who should know better, using the same sort of fuzzy thinking and language about “curing cancer” […]